Voiceover:
00.00 This is The Beat - a podcast series that keeps you in the know about
the latest community policing topics facing our nation
Pradine Saint-Fort:
00.08 Hello. My name is Pradine Saint-Fort, and I'm a program associate in
the Center on Immigration and Justice at the Vera Institute of Justice.
In 2010, the Vera Institute and the COPS office partnered to provide and
produce a guide for law enforcement agencies looking to either begin or to
enhance their work with immigrant communities.
The guide is a national report titled "Engaging Police in Immigrant
Communities: Promising Practices From the Field." This report profiles
promising practices from about 10 policing agencies from across the country.
This podcast is part of a series of recordings that accompany the report.
Each podcast is in Q and A format and provides practical advice from agency
personnel who have been involved in and working with promising practices
featured in our national report.
In this podcast, we're currently joined by officer Jesse Guardiola of the
Tulsa Police Department in Oklahoma. We'll be referring to this department as
TPD in the podcast. Officer Guardiola is the Hispanic Outreach Relations
Officer and has worked on various aspects of the department's Hispanic
Outreach Program since April of 2010. He is here today to talk about how
agencies can successfully include practical foreign language instruction in
police training.
Thank you for joining us, Officer Guardiola.
Jesse Guardiola:
01.17 Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.
Saint-Fort:
01.20 To start off, could you please share with our audience what the
Hispanic Outreach Program is and how it's structured?
Guardiola:
01.25 The Hispanic Outreach Program was started to improve communication
between TPD and Tulsa's growing Hispanic community. We do this through six
different initiatives.
The first is through the commendation and complaint process, which Hispanic
civilians can either praise an office or file a complaint about an officer.
The second is through my position, the Hispanic Outreach Liaison, which is a
liaison between the police and the community. Third, we conduct outreach
through the Hispanic Spanish media. And fourth, we have a volunteer
interpreter program as well the fifth, a helpline for Spanish speakers that
call in. Lastly, we focus on education for both police and community. The
Spanish language training at the academy falls under this.
Saint-Fort:
02.15 Thanks for that context. So, let's talk a little about the Spanish
language training. Could you tell us a little bit about why the department
focuses specifically on Spanish and why that language skill is important to
TPD officers?
Guardiola:
02.28 Well, in the Tulsa Metro Area we have a large Spanish-speaking
population: about 70,000 Spanish speakers. That means that every officer on
the street will encounter a Spanish-speaker at some point. Some of our
officers can speak fluent Spanish, but not all. Our department does provide
an incentive pay to those officers and verifies their language proficiency
through an outside testing agency for those officers that are bilingual.
But the majority of our officers aren't fluent in Spanish. We focus on
teaching them Spanish to help those officers communicate, on some level, with
the Spanish-speakers that they would definitely encounter on a call in the
future.
Saint-Fort:
03.07 So, I understand the Spanish language in the academy focuses
specifically on 27 key phrases. Can you tell us what the goal was behind
creating and selecting those phrases?
Guardiola:
03.18 We knew we couldn't make all our officers bilingual. We need to give
officers phrases that they could memorize, use them quickly and effectively,
and I selected 27 key phrases that would generate closed-end responses.
What I mean by this is, when an officer uses one of the phrases or commands,
the person should respond by doing an action. For example, when an officer
yells, "Show me your hands!" to someone who understands English, the person
either takes their hands out of their pockets or makes some movement to
follow the orders. If the officer yells the same phrase in Spanish, the
officer should get a similar reaction from a Spanish speaker. If not, then
the officer could interpret that lack of response as an indication that the
person is not willing to follow the officer's orders.
The phrases also take into account different circumstances an officer might
come in. For example, a few phrases help officers to ask Spanish speakers for
their name, address, and then ask them to write it down as well.
Saint-Fort:
04.19 That's extremely practical. When do the police academy cadets
actually start learning these phrases?
Guardiola:
04.25 The cadets learn the phrases throughout the 27 weeks that they're in
the academy. I start out with a two-hour intro course at the beginning of the
academy and introduce them to all 27 phrases and make sure that the cadets
have the right pronunciation. They are instructed to learn five new phrases
every four weeks until they have memorized all 27 phrases. Then I visit them
every other week during morning formation and grill them on these phrases.
Saint-Fort:
04.51 You test them during morning formation? How does that work, exactly?
Guardiola:
04.56 Well, morning formation at the Tulsa Police Academy starts at 7:30 in
the morning, in the gym, before the cadets' day starts. I come in, give each
cadet a phrase in English, and the cadet has to say it back to me in Spanish.
If they get it correctly, then I move on to the next cadet. If they get it
wrong, then they owe me whatever amount of pushups they have built up to.
When every cadet's had their turn, I go back to the first cadet and do it
again. We go through this until each cadet has been grill-tested, about two
or three times, with three different phrases. When I finish, I assign them
the five new phrases for the next month. Then I release them to their first
day of class.
Saint-Fort:
05.37 So, for officers who have never had any foreign language training,
that intro course in the morning, language drill, is probably their first
experience with another language, right?
Guardiola:
05.45 Yes; yes. Of course.
Saint-Fort:
05.46 So, how do you motivate those officers and get them to really
understand the value of those phrases?
Guardiola:
05.50 Well, nobody at 7:30 in the morning, at least I have seen, loves
doing pushups. So, for them, you know, not to do pushups early in the morning
is a motivation. But I think; I really try to drive home the point that this
is about officer safety. That, more importantly, we want these officers to be
able to communicate to them at some level for everybody to be safe in the
situation. For the officer to go home at night. For the Hispanic Spanish
speaker to get the assistance that they need at that time, or to control the
situation.
So, it could be a life-or-death situation and that's what I try to bring
across to them is it's not a matter of days or months before you come into a
situation where you have to speak some level of Spanish. It's a matter of
hours.
Saint-Fort:
06.40 Is there some kind of culture component, also, to the training?
Guardiola:
06.45 Yes, Pradine. That's a good question. Because before I begin the
first lessons of the 27 phrases, I give the cadets an hour of cultural
training on why they have to learn Spanish in the central U.S. which,
historically, has been predominantly English-speaking communities. I explain
to the cadets why immigrants come to the U.S.
So, I talk about issues including poverty, other conditions that might make
people leave their home country. The cultural training doesn't end with the
first intro lesson to Spanish. I sprinkle some discussion about culture
throughout the academy and talk about issues specific to the central U.S. and
Oklahoma, and remind the cadets why they need to communicate and to learn
this for emergency situations.
Saint-Fort:
07.28 So, is there also some kind of final language test that the cadets
receive or have to go through?
Guardiola:
07.33 What we call the end of their academy training is situational
exercises. And what I mean by that is that we have actors that come in and
play a role. Whatever tactical situation that needs to be vetted, so that the
training department knows that they've done their job correctly.
Well, in my case, I want to make sure that they can use the 27 phrases while
out on the streets and that they can apply it. So, I bring in my Spanish
volunteers as actors to play the role in a domestic violence call. Or, we
might switch it up to a prowler call. But my two cadet officers show up on my
scene and they have to use the 27 phrases that they've been memorizing
through this whole situational exercise, and my actors are instructed not to
do, move, or anything unless they understand the Spanish that's been spoken
to them. Because if they don't understand it, then what use is the
memorization? I don't want to make it, you know, some sort of game in trying
to mess up my cadets. I want them to use their 27 phrases and if the 27
phrases are used correctly, then that actor should do exactly what's being
asked of them.
And they get through the exercise using the 27 phrases and, of course, we're
excited about that because I know that they can control the situation in a
real life experience when they go out on patrol. But as well as if, you know,
they suddenly fumble through it, well, I want them to experience what it's
gonna feel like to not be able to communicate with the community. It could be
hours before you would get a Spanish translator on your call, where, if you
would apply these 27 phrases you could have gotten some information.
Saint-Fort:
09.24 Wow. That's very useful information. I think our audience is
definitely going to appreciate this podcast and the information you've
shared, so thank you so much, Officer Guardiola.
Guardiola:
09.32 Well, thank you for having me.
Voiceover:
09.34 The Beat was brought to you by the United States Department of
Justice COPS Office. The COPS Office helps to keep our nationís communities
safe by giving grants to law enforcement agencies, developing community
policing publications, developing partnerships, and solving problems.
5